


charcoal sunrise

by bloobeary



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Avengers 4 speculation, Fix-It, Infinity War spoilers, M/M, Well - Freeform, mostly - Freeform, this is also steve trying to cope, this is me trying to cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-02 00:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14532255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloobeary/pseuds/bloobeary
Summary: ***CONTAINS INFINITY WAR SPOILERS***Steve hasn’t drawn in a while, in years actually, but the it’s first thing he finds himself doing with any piece of scrap paper.





	charcoal sunrise

**Author's Note:**

> **THIS CONTAINS INFINITY WAR SPOILERS**
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> we interrupt your regularly scheduled amount of gay with a different kind of gay but in the end, it's still gay  
> this is basically me just trying to cope with the end of infinity war (which this spoils btw so dont read if u haven't watched)  
> also im really not familiar with the comic books so not a lot if not none of this is accurate or canon compliant but its a fic so you know what deal with it thanks so much

Steve hasn’t drawn in a while, in years actually, but the it’s first thing he finds himself doing with any piece of scrap paper. And he knows they're not always good, not always a concrete and distinguishable picture, but given as he's had no time to sit down and process enough to take his time while drawing, he gives himself a pass.

Vision used to call it art therapy, back when the split happened and Bucky had to go back into cryo. At least that’s what Wanda used to tell him.

Thinking about them makes his throat tighten, so he draws instead. Vision’s eyes and Wanda’s hands and Sam’s wings and T’Challa’s smile. They litter the edges of his papers, the backs of napkins and even his wrists sometimes, when he's sitting in a jet and all he has is a pen.

He draws Peter too, though he’s never seen him without the mask, so it’s just little drawings of a boy with his shield on an airport tarmac.

On a day that they're all miraculously back at the compound, he finds Tony sitting in his room surrounded by all of his drawings, the shoebox they've been stuffed into upturned on the floor, and when he looks up Steve can see that he’s been crying.

“It’s my fault.” He says, nearly wheezing. He’s holding a piece of paper that has Peter all over it, Steve recognizes it by the web design he drew on the back. There’s a tiny, evil, spiteful part of him that wants to agree with Tony.

But he just sits down and hugs him.

“Does it help?” Tony asks.

“Sometimes.” Steve lies.

If he were to show his sketches to any therapist they’d say he has a hard time letting go. If he were to show a therapist all of the pages he’s filled with drawings and half drawings of Bucky, they’d tell him to try visiting a grave instead of building him a shrine. But there is no grave, just a spot in the Wakandan jungle that’s been burned into Steve’s brain, marked by a stone and a cross that Steve had to make.

He draws Bucky like he remembers him pre-serum, pre-war. He draws him as he remembers him when they were kids—all chubby cheeks and fast hands, sharp elbows and skinned knees. He never draws him with a metal arm.

 

 

He’s sitting in full gear now, shields on the floor next to him, knee bouncing erratically but hand steady as he details the lines of Bucky’s jaw on the corner of a book.

Nat knocks on the door and Steve doesn’t flinch. “We’re ready.” Her voice is shaking, and Steve understands.

He drops his pencil and picks up the shields instead. He and Nat share a long bout of eye contact before he sighs. “What else is there left to lose?”

He says it selfishly, but he doesn't really care. The first time he lost Bucky he put himself in a cold-induced coma, to assume that he would do anything less reckless the second time is stupid. The only thing stopping him from sacrificing himself to Thanos right then an there is the fact that if Buck came back once, he could come back again.

 

Carol Danvers is a force to be reckoned with, and though Steve hasn’t spent more than a few days with her, he trusts her. Whenever anyone says Captain, they both look up but it’s never for Steve. He’s long relinquished the title of Captain America, but it’s still a habit. She’s everything that he wishes he could be for the team, what he used to be for them. Even Tony’s listening.

For the first time in his life he’s been tasked to damage control instead of leading point, so he doesn’t see how Carol does it, he just knows that one second he has his shield in an alien’s mouth, and the next the ground under them is shaking.

Carol is covered in purple blood, her hair matted down against her head with it. She’s holding Thanos’ arm in her hand, gauntlet is shining; Thor is pulling his axe out of the gargantuan skull, his fingers still sparking.

She and Tony are talking in fast frantic whispers, and Steve can barely process it all, but she grabs what he thinks is the soul stone, and the ringing in Steve’s ears intensifies as the it glows.

And then there’s more of them than they came with, and the sound Nat makes in the back of her throat as she reaches out to touch Wanda is indication enough.

Steve looks around frantically, past T’Challa, past Sam even. Past Tony holding Peter in his arms like a father, past some guy he’s been told is Dr. Strange all but bowing to Carol and taking back a stone. Past a little raccoon in a vest holding hands with what Steve met as Groot.

“Steve?”

It’s the broken record that’s been playing in his head for six months, it kickstarts his heart as he turns around and sees Bucky standing there, looking exactly the same as the last time Steve saw him, and he can’t help himself when he launches his whole nearly 300 pound body at his best friend, his soulmate, the love of all of his lives.

It knocks the wind out of both of them, and the hitch of Bucky's breath in his ear is a sign that he's real, and solid, and effectively not slipping through Steve’s fingers again.

“Steve, you’re crushing me.” Bucky says somewhat jokingly. Steve doesn’t apologize, and doesn’t let go for another minute. “Steve, hey, it’s okay, I'm here.” Bucky says again, quiet and gentle like the hand that’s at the base of his neck. His face is still buried in Bucky's neck, but he hears Thor say _where is my brother?_ and the anguished scream barely gets muffled by the thunder that splits the sky in half. Steve starts to cry then, and doesn’t stop until they’re back home.

 

Six months pass and Steve’s still drawing, but they’re happier now, all of them are full and have smiles and he gives them to people instead of hoarding his memories in a shoebox under his bed. He’s been sending some to Carol, and some are serious— Her in her uniform standing on a broken planet with the stars behind her, her with the infinity stones in her hands. Some aren’t as much, since Bucky or Peter or Tony will find his drawings and add a little of their own— A heart from Bucky, a little stick man giving a thumbs up from Peter, and something from Tony which he has to cross out. He gives them all to her.

He sends some to Shuri and T’Challa as well, and gets back a package with a tablet in it and a note that says _Colonizer, Stop killing trees. PS thank you for brining my brother back. PPS. Tell the White Wolf I say hello._

Bucky and Wanda have become closer than Steve ever imagined--he thinks she reminds him of his sisters. She still wanders the woods around the compound aimlessly some days, but she always comes home. Steve mentions art therapy, and she laughs before she cries into his shoulder. Steve feels a little guilty sometimes, when he gets to hold Bucky's hand in his and Wanda had to watch the love of her life die by her hand and then again by another's, left standing on a world covered in blood waiting for something that could never come.

“I am not good at art.” She says finally, sniffling.

“I don’t think that’s the point.” Steve laughs a little and slides her a drawing of her and Vision, plucked right out of his memories onto paper.

She stares at it for a while.

“Thank you, Steve.” She holds the drawing to her chest, and Steve nods.

 

 

Sometimes Steve wakes up and he can’t feel Bucky near him and it makes his heart rocket into his throat and sometimes he’ll wake up screaming. Bucky always puts Steve’s hand over his heart and when that’s not enough he’ll let him lay with his ear against his chest until he can breathe again.

Sometimes Steve hits the wall in the gym so hard he can feel his bones break, but they heal by the time he feels he needs to do it again. He'll stay long enough for the bruising to go down, so Bucky doesn't worry. But somehow he always has an icepack waiting for him when he gets back upstairs.

 

 

Steve makes it back to their room one night, where Bucky’s lying on the bed, sweats riding low on his hips, hair still wet from a shower. He’s not wearing his prosthetic arm— not the metal one, nor the more realistic one Shuri made him.

It takes Steve’s breath away. “Did you like my hair better like this?” Bucky asks, holding up a sketch of him with shorter hair. His brain floods with memories of them sitting on the fire escape outside of his tiny apartment, Steve sliding tiny wildflowers behind Bucky's ear. He figures they'll actually stay in his hair now that it's longer.

Steve shakes his head and gets on the bed, past the point of feeling embarrassed. “I don’t care what your hair looks like as long as you’re alive, if I'm honest.”

Bucky sighs, hiding a smile and puts the book down. “You can answer my question without being a sap, you know?”

Steve laughs and leans forward to kiss Bucky’s forehead. “I know. I’ve just lost you twice and I don’t plan on it ever happening again. This piece of shit universe better leave us the fuck alone.”

Bucky opens his mouth to say something but Tony pokes his head in through the door and emphatically says  _language_. 

Steve laughs, dropping his head to Bucky’s collarbone. “You ever gonna let that go?”

“Absolutely not. Anyways, Pepper’s baby shower is in six months, you better figure out what you’re getting us.” Tony says nonchalantly, and Steve sits up immediately.

“Wait— wait what?”

Bucky beams and stands up to give Tony a one armed hug and a clap on the back. Steve hugs him so tight that Tony threatens to put on the suit and shoot him.

 

It's later that night when Steve asks the question he knows is the reason they're both still awake. "Have you ever thought about that?"

"'Bout what?" Bucky mumbles sleepily, voice rumbling out of his chest. He's lying on his stomach, face smushed against his pillow.

"Having kids." Steve whispers, as if saying it out loud is cursing it enough.

Bucky's quiet for a long time. When he talks again, he's rolled onto his back. "When I was under in Wakanda and I woke up, Shuri told me she had fixed me, well, most of me. I didn't believe her, but a few months later I started dreaming again, no nightmares, just dreams. They'd feel so real, you know." He holds out a hand and makes a fist before dropping it again. His skin looks pearlescent in the dim room. "I'd dream about you a lot." Steve starts to tear up and scoots closer to him, so he can press his mouth against his shoulder. "There was this one where I was holding a little girl."

His voice has started to shake now, and Steve feels Bucky's hand tighten around his wrist. "I didn't--you know how dreams are, they start off in the middle, you know, and I just knew, Steve. She looked just like your mom."

They're both crying now, but Bucky still manages a joke. "Do you think they'll let two one-hundred year old super soldiers adopt a kid?"

Steve laughs and tucks his nose into Bucky's hair. "I can have Tony write us a letter of recommendation."

"Yeah, that'll help." Bucky says sarcastically.

 

 

“Do you think we should get rid of these?” Bucky asks, tangling his hand in Steve’s dog tags and holding the vial hanging off them between two fingers.

Steve swallows heavily and finds he can’t make words.

“If you want to keep them, that’s okay. But you don’t have to. Since I’m alive, and all.”

“You don’t remember anything? From being in the stone?” Steve doesn’t say from dying even though it’s what he means.

Bucky shakes his head. “It just felt like being in cryo.” That makes Steve want to cry all over again.

“We should put them by my mom.” Bucky suggests quietly, and Steve nods.

 

So they go the next weekend, to the little tiny corner of the cemetery his mom is buried in, they clear the dew off the stone and Steve puts the vial of ashes down next to it with shaky hands. “He’s not dead. But he was. And I figure you’d like to have him close to you, like I did.”

Bucky’s hand is on his shoulder, and finally Steve feels like he’ll be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi this fic was inspired bc i read "follow me(i'm right behind you)" by SquaresAreNotCircles and the "Can you still draw?" line sparked something in me and i wrote this on the notes app in my phone at like 1am so go give that a read because it's beautiful thank u very much


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